Friday, April 5, 2013

Notebooks as Curatorial Projects

(Ekalokam Notebooks on my table)

Yesterday a small parcel came by courier. I knew it was on
its way. I signed the yellow sheet and received it. I did not open it for
almost a day. I knew about the content of that parcel. I knew those were small
little notebooks with the photographs taken by Abul Kalam Azad. Thiruvannamalai
based Ekalokam Collective (One World) has published these note books. Ekalokam
is an alternative publishing house with a proclaimed aim of taking the images
of works of art to a larger common public. It is a gesture of initiating people
into art and culture without using persuasive jargons. Ekalokam aspires to move
into the lives of people with art and make them feel that they need art, like
the way they need food, security and comfort. Today, art has gone away from people
because people do not think about it as food (for thought) or comfort (of
spirit). Ekalokam thinks that if the images of works of art are seen regularly
in mundane contexts, they would grow into the consciousness of people. There
will be empathetic relationships and graceful recognitions. Even a notebook
with the images of works of art could be cathartic.

I did open them finally. The small notebooks are like the
quarter size pocket books with thematic titles for each; ten in total. Then I
thought of the whole set as a curatorial take on the works of Azad’s
photography works. His photographs reproduced here are originally printed on Hahnemuhle
paper and each print is 20” x 20” in size. They are edition works. Now what you
see in these notebooks are the miniature versions of the same and they are in
multiple editions. When you hold a notebook in your hand, you get to see only
one miniature edition of the work. This is exactly what happens in a
photography show. You see framed images on the walls of a gallery and they have
editions elsewhere. Hence, when you carry these notebooks you are in fact
carrying small little shows of Abul Azad. The choice of using these notebooks
for writing down things is absolutely yours. You may or you may not. But you
have a show in your hand and if you have any impressions on these works or
impressions on anything you may write them down. Each time you revisit these
notebooks, you feel like stepping into a gallery for an exclusively private
view. The curator/publisher stands absent but the thematic takes you from page
to page. After ten years or fifteen years, if you care to keep them, they would
look like the miniature retrospective of the artist. It could happen with any
other artist and his/her images.

(Ekalokam Brochure)

I don’t take down notes. I take impressions in mind. During
the formative years and the years that I had spent as a journalist, it was
imperative for me to take down notes. I could scribble down points in spiral
notebooks when I attended press conferences or interviewed people of
importance. Practice took me to intense listening. When you listen intently,
each word and sentence gets etched in your mind. Your brain behaves like a
spiral bound notebook. The notations of time that you take in automatically
while listening become punctuation marks. I have travelled to places with a
notebook. I have even bought small notebooks to write down my impressions. But
it never happens. I look at things and they transform themselves into words and
get stored in a folder in my mind. Whenever you need to reproduce them, you just
need to click them open. But I have seen people writing down things in their
notebooks. I see them as well organized people. They never miss an appointment
or they forget missions. I wish I could do something of that sort. But often I fail
to do it. So I do not know whether I would ever write notes on the pages of
these books. What I could do maximum is maintaining a task diary.

When you buy a notebook with the images of works of art in
them, it becomes a thing of pride. When you spend money, a little more than
what you spend on normal notebooks, you tend to store it for keepsake. Whether
you write notes in them or not, you are going to keep these notebooks as
souvenirs and you are going to revisit them occasionally. Think of a museum.
What are those objects kept in there labelled and categorized? Once up on a
time they were all functional objects; they were functional in various contexts
ranging from mechanical to religious, quotidian to royal. Once removed from
their functional contexts, they become relics of culture and we tend to
preserve them. Photographs are the impressions of functional objects and
contexts. But when they travel from function to image, they become dysfunctional
in the actual sense. They become relics of an immediate time. Hence, a
photograph in itself is a museum piece. It museumizes contexts. And in turn the
photographs as objects get museumized as they are identified as images invested
with cultural values. Removed from function they become aesthetical objects.
These notebooks, in a way, are museums in themselves. Once they are removed
from their actual function (of making notes) they become museum items. As they
are handy objects, they become a part of our daily lives. Like a memory these
books remain.

(My Anger and Other Stories notebook)

Azad is a versatile photographer with a critical view on
things. He oscillates between autobiographical narratives and documenting societies.
Documentation, in a conventional sense is a very detached objective act. But
for an artist documentation is a sort of identification with ideas or
attitudes. These notebooks produced by Ekalokam have the following curatorial
thematic in each book. Periya Kovil (Annamalayiar Temple dedicated to Shiva),
My Anger and Other Stories, Untouchables, Chai, Charas, Chappati, Dockland,
Samadhi, Coral Hills, Beatles in Rishikesh, Etimology of Rishikes and Southern
Salt are the titles. Azad’s leaning towards gender politics and subaltern
politics anchor him in finding his subjects in and around the areas where he
lives. He travels to the places where religious rituals are performed for
peripheral people. As an avid portrait photographer too Azad has an immense
collection of people in his repertoire though they have not yet been published
in a book form.

(Southern Salt Notebook)

These notebooks are precious collectibles for the reasons I
have recounted in this article. Perhaps, the real buyers of these notebooks
would find their own reasons to have them. These notebooks are like a
collective performance. They are books but not yet books. They are pictures but
not yet pictures. They are museums but not yet museums. They are souvenirs but
not yet souvenirs. They are functional but not yet.....Possibilities are
immense. The real possibility of these notebooks lies in their ability to
discard definitions. Not this not this. Perhaps, Ekalokam happens when we keep
saying, note this, note this.